March Madness Bracketology – December 28th Edition

As of the morning of December 28th, 2016, there have been a total of 2,227 games played by the 351 NCAA division I teams. This means that we are approximately 42% of the 2015-16 season completed. Despite closing in on the halfway mark for the season, there have been only a total of 38 conference games played across the 32 conferences.

Using the current games played, the locations of the games, and the disparity of scores, we are able to build out a projection for the 2016 March Madness Tournament.

Rules: In order to make the tournament, a team must win their conference tournament, win the Ivy League regular season, or become an “at-large” bid that is selected based on merit by an NCAA committee.

In this post, we give an updated rankings for all 351 NCAA Division I teams. But first, we identify the current teams on pace (projected by our models) for becoming conference champions and “at-large” bids.

It should be noted that our rankings will include the suspended Southern Methodist University, whereas the AP Top 25 Coaches’ Poll does not include the Mustangs.

March Madness Current Entrants:

This being our first prediction of the participants of March Madness, we caution to the fact that there have been exactly 29 conference games played across the 32 conferences; thanks to the Big South, Metro Atlantic Athletic, and the Mid-Eastern Athletic conferences. No other conferences have played any conference games over the first 37 days of the season. Hence all noted conference champions will be predicted based on our rankings system.

America East: Stony Brook (7-4, 0-0)

American: Cincinnati (10-3, 0-0)

Atlantic 10: Dayton (9-2, 0-0)

Atlantic Coast: Louisville (11-2, 0-0)

Atlantic Sun: North Florida (10-5, 0-0)

Big 12: Oklahoma (11-0, 0-0)

Big East: Xavier (12-0, 0-0)

Big Sky: Weber State (7-5, 0-0)

Big South: UNC Asheville (7-5, 1-0)

Big Ten: Michigan State (13-0, 0-0)

Big West: Hawaii (9-2, 0-0)

Colonial Athletic: William & Mary (7-3, 0-0)

Conference USA: Louisiana Tech (10-2, 0-0)

Horizon League: Valparaiso (10-2, 0-0)

Ivy League: Yale (5-5, 0-0)

Metro Atlantic: Monmouth (9-3, 1-1)

Mid-American: Akron (9-2, 0-0)

Mid-Eastern: Norfolk State (5-8, 1-0)

Missouri Valley: Evansville (11-2, 0-0)

Mountain West: UNLV (9-4, 0-0)

Northeast: Wagner (6-4, 0-0)

Ohio Valley: Morehead State (6-4, 0-0)

Pac-12: Arizona (12-1, 0-0)

Patriot League: Army (8-3, 0-0)

Southeastern: South Carolina (11-0, 0-0)

Southern: Chattanooga (10-2, 0-0)

Southland: Texas A&M Corpus Christi (8-3, 0-0)

Southwestern Athletic: Southern (8-5, 0-0)

Summit League: South Dakota State (11-3, 0-0)

Sun Belt: Arkansas Little Rock (10-1, 0-0)

West Coast: St. Mary’s (10-1, 2-0)

Western Athletic: Grand Canyon (11-2, 0-0)

The remaining 36 “at-large” teams are then the top 36 teams in our rankings.These 36 teams are given as:

Providence (12-1)

Kansas (10-1)

Purdue (12-1)

West Virginia (10-1)

Villanova (9-2)

Virginia (9-2)

Miami (FL) (10-1)

Vanderbilt (7-4)

Pittsburgh (10-1)

Florida (8-3)

Butler (10-1)

Michigan (10-3)

Texas A&M (9-2)

North Carolina (10-2)

Duke (9-2)

Kentucky (10-2)

USC (11-2)

Iowa State (10-1)

Gonzaga (10-3)

Iowa (9-3)

Connecticut (8-3)

Maryland (11-1)

Texas (8-3)

Indiana (10-3)

Baylor (9-2)

Texas Tech (9-1)

Oregon (10-2)

Colorado (11-2)

California (9-3)

Northwestern (12-1)

Notre Dame (8-3)

UT – Arlington (9-2)

Ohio State (8-5)

Georgia (6-3)

Utah (10-2)

Memphis (8-3)

The next set of teams are our current bubble teams. These are teams that are close to making the NCAA Tournament but are on the outside looking in.

Wichita State

UCLA

Washington

Seton Hall

Richmond

Stanford

Kansas State

Arizona State

St. Joe’s

George Washington

The current state of the NCAA Tournament is given as follows:

NCAA March Madness seedings based on rankings as of December 28th, 2016.

We note that we are not predicting the field of 68, but rather giving seedings based on play up to today. Our goal is to populate the March Madness tournament with current seedings; to give indication of where teams are sitting as of today. Since most conference games have yet to be played, we expect the predicted power house teams to climb to the top of these rankings (Maryland, Kentucky, Duke); provided they win almost all their games for the remainder of this season.

NCAA Rankings on December 28th, 2016:

We now present our top-to-bottom rankings based on wins, game locations, and disparity of points.